called to preserve these great ideas, to cultivate and continue them.  And among these ideals is this, that we afford the possibility to the working classes to elevate themselves by beauty, and by beauty to enable them to abstract themselves and rise above the thoughts they otherwise would have.

“When Art, as now often occurs, does nothing more than represent misery as still more unlovely than it is already, by so doing she sins against the German people.  The cultivation of the ideal is at the same time the greatest work of culture, and if we wish to be and remain an example in this to other nations the whole people must work together to that end; if Culture is to fulfil her task she must penetrate to the lowest classes of society.  That she can only do when art comes into play, when she raises up, instead of descending into the gutter.

“As ruler of the country I often find it extremely bitter that art, through its masters, does not with sufficient energy oppose such tendencies.  I do not for a moment fail to perceive that many an aspiring character is to be found among the partisans of these tendencies, who are perhaps filled with the best intentions but who are on the wrong path.  The true artist needs no advertisement, no press, no patronage.  I do not believe that your great protagonists in the domain of science, either in ancient Greece or in Italy or in the Renaissance period ever had recourse to a reclame such as nowadays is often made in the press in order to bring their ideas into prominence, but worked as God inspired them and let others do the talking.

“And so must an honest, proper artist act.  The art which descends to reclame is no art be it lauded a hundred or a thousand-fold.  A feeling for what is beautiful or ugly has every one, be he ever so simple, and to educate this feeling in the people I require all of you.  That in the Siegesallee you have done a piece of such work, I have specially to thank you.

“This I can even now tell you—­the impression which the Siegesallee has made on the foreigner is quite an overpowering one; everywhere respect for German sculpture is making itself perceivable.  May you always remain on these heights, may such masters stand by my sons and sons’ sons, should they ever come into existence!  Then, I am convinced, will our people be in a position to love the beautiful and honour lofty ideals.”

At the Berlin Art Museum next year, after praising the devotion of his parents to art, and especially of his mother, “a nature,” he said, “about which poesy breathed,” he continued:—­